Animation &Disney &Frame Grabs 09 Apr 2008 08:25 am
DVD problems
- Let’s talk a little about the problems of trying to study animation from a dvd. You can get a screen grab easily from the free media that comes with your computer. If you move ahead “1″ frame at a time and grab each image, you can study the animation. The only problem is it doesn’t really work.
I’ve made a few posts where I’ve pulled every frame and separated the character (via photoshop) from the background, then put it through Aftereffects to create a walk cycle. You can see this with Betty Boop or Popeye or, now, from 101 Dalmatians a walk cycle of the Art Student.
The only problem is it’s a fake.
I’ve captured EVERY FRAME of those cycles, and I’ve meticulously assembled them up to Aftereffects. Hypothetically, the images should be posted on “ones” to make it work, but it doesn’t The timing is different – too fast. With each one of those three cycles, I’ve had to put the images I’ve captured on “threes” to get close to the timing of the original.
This would certainly have not made sense with a walk cycle from 101 Dalmatians. It most certainly is on “ones” in the actual film, yet the timing as captured is off. This can only mean that the compression on dvds is not allowing the images captured on a “frame by frame” basis to be all the images on the disk. I have to compensate. So far this compensation has worked.
______________(Click any image to enlarge.)
But now I’ll show you one that doesn’t work. It has to be viewed on “ones”, and you have to see all the images to get it to work. This is the second walk cycle from 101 Dalmatians. The “Buxom girl and bulldog” walk comes close, but no cigar. There are only two positions for the little dog – expanded legs and crossing position. On “ones” this might look ok for a rapid walk, but to get the timing for this walk cycle – as it appears in the film – you actually have to put these frame grabs on something between “threes” and “fours”. It absolutely does not work.
So I give you a failed attept at showcasing another brilliant walk cycle from this excellent film. Here’s the “Buxom girl and bulldog” seq. 001, scene 21 from 101 Dalmatians. Blaine Gibson animated it.
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14Again, note that Hans Perk is posting the studio Drafts for this film on his site, and Mark Mayerson is posting Mosaics and comments on his site.
on 09 Apr 2008 at 9:17 am 1.John Celestri said …
Michael,
As the original animation was created at the rate of 24 fps, is the DVD conversation running at 30 fps? If so, some drawings will be held for an extra frame, throwing off the ability to correctly analyze the timing. For me, this is a hindrance to being able to study what the animator originally had in mind — did he/she intend to expose that drawing for 1 frame or 2? Did he/she want that pose held for 5 frames or 6?
on 09 Apr 2008 at 9:21 am 2.Mark Mayerson said …
I’ve used Adobe Premiere to compile student work, and the output compresses the images in terms of quality but also does odd things in terms of time. The student work has 1 frame dissolves added to many frames and they definitely were not in the original.
Are your problems coming from your DVD player working single frame or from AfterEffects?
on 09 Apr 2008 at 10:03 am 3.Michael said …
Regardless of the system, I’m saying that the dvd uses a compression. It runs at a correct speed when played on any dvd player. However, when stop-framed, it will not advance to EVERY frame. It skips by at least two, probably three frames. This happens with all dvd players I’ve come in contact with. Studying frame by frame from dvds is not possible, as far as I can see, if you’re concerned with timing. It isn’t the program I’m using; it’s the player – all players. I’m going to try experimenting by transferring to another digital format and then dragging it into Final Cut Pro (which would add another form of compression.) Perhaps it would work better.
VHS players were different. You could view every frame, although every fifth frame would double expose every fourth and fifth frame so that the film could expand from 24 to 30 frames. This is likely what you’re thinking about, John.
on 09 Apr 2008 at 10:53 am 4.Mark Mayerson said …
I have an iMac with whatever the default DVD player is on it. It runs OSX, but I have a model before they started using Intel chips. It definitely single frames. It’s how I was able to figure out the beats of the walks at the start of Dalmatians.
I wish that the DVD software would allow single framing in reverse, but it only goes forward.
on 09 Apr 2008 at 12:08 pm 5.David Nethery said …
There is an open-source app called HandBrake which converts movie data from DVD format to .MPEG-4 movies . Available for Mac, Linux , and Windows.
http://handbrake.fr/
Here’s an example made with Handbrake :
Dog Walk Movie
It’s on ones and all frames appear to be there.
on 09 Apr 2008 at 12:26 pm 6.Galen Fott said …
These are issues dealing with 3:2 pulldown, the process by which video’s interlaced fields are utilized to get 24fps footage to display smoothly in video’s 29.97 frame rate. After Effects can remove 3:2 pulldown, but it can be a bit tricky.
That HandBrake clip looks very nice…I’d guess that’s what’s going on there.